Humble Bugs October 2016 Subscription Box Review + Coupon

Humble Bugs is a bi-monthly subscription that teaches 4-11 year old children positive character traits like honesty, courage, empathy, goal setting, acceptance, friendship and loyalty through hands-on activities. Boxes are designed for families to work through together. Each box contains enough materials for three people to complete.

The founders of Humble Bugs, parents themselves, believe that kids can develop positive character traits through knowledge, confidence, and a family support system. Each Humble Bugs box aims to nurture all three through crafts, entertainment, and hands-on learning.

Boxes cost $35 each but the cost can go as low as $30 each with a year-long subscription. Shipping is free, and boxes can ship anywhere within the 50 United States, including APOs.

The theme this month was Setting Goals! I like how the box uses stories of Olympians as examples of people who make goals. This seems very fitting given the excitement of the Olympics a couple of months ago.

Each box arrives with information for parents to help plan the delivery of all of the box’s contents. Personally, though, I found the parent booklet the most helpful place to start.

Even though this booklet says it’s for parents, it’s actually a great place for everyone to start.

It’s laid out nicely. You can start at the beginning and work your way through the book, stopping at the end of any or all of the segments detailed above.

The crafts and activity supplies arrive packaged in numbered bags. If you begin by reading and working through the booklet for parents, you’ll want to have package number 1 at your side.

It contains the craft supplies for the big project in the book as well as the movie for family movie night and cotton balls for one of the activities in the book. The movie, Jumping for Joy ($14.95), was fantastic. In it, Bobbie, a fantastic basketball player, is mistaken for a boy and asked to join a boy’s basketball team. On the one hand, Bobbie is thrilled to play ball, but on the other, she wonders whether or not she should tell her teammates that she’s a girl. It’s 1964 after all, and girls aren’t allowed to play boy’s basketball. The movie challenges kids to question their own biases and encourages them to stand up for others.

To demonstrate how it’s often easier to break up goals into more manageable chunks, my son was challenged with catching five enclosed cotton balls. When I threw them at once, catching all five was a seemingly impossible task.

When we broke up the activity into catching all five cotton balls one at a time, however, the challenge became much more manageable.

Next, my son got to work creating some goals of his own.

His goal is to swim in the Olympics.

His first step is 1 tag + 2 tag (what his swim teacher calls freestyle/front crawl).

He will accomplish this goal right now (this was the first time he had ever written anything entirely on his own. So exciting!).

Once his goals had been written down, he needed a place to store them. The first craft in this installment of Humble Bugs was to create a briefcase to house his goals.

I loved the bright, inviting colors of the decorations!

My son was eager to carry his goals around with him.

This second craft was a stand-alone project. Humble Bugs provided us with background information about dream catchers which my son and I both thought was pretty cool. We were eager to get to work creating our own.

This project was a lot of fun. If we do it again, we’ll start by unwrapping all of the yarn and threading most of it through the first hole to begin.

After his web was complete, my son enjoyed threading the beads and cut up straws through pieces of yarn to make the tassels at the bottom of his dream catcher.

I’m happy to report that both my son and I had happy dreams with these in our bedrooms. My son liked the idea of this so much that he decided his little sister had to have one in her room too. He asked me if he could take mine and give it to his sister. Now both kids sleep with a dream catcher in their rooms.

The kids’ book contains background information for kids about the Olympics along with an activity for them to direct.

Since the theme this month is setting goals, learning more about the Olympics was very apropos.

All the supplies needed for organizing Family Olympics were included in bag number 3.

Supplies included tickets, a scorecard, coins for the shotput and spoons and cotton balls for the cotton ball run.

We began Family Olympics with a flag ceremony. Everyone created their own flags that represented themselves.

Everyone had fun parading around the front lawn with their flags in hand.

Once the opening ceremonies had concluded, my son said it was time for Family Olympics to start. The first event was the crab walk. My son came in first, my husband came in second and my daughter came in third.

The next event was the spoon-held cotton ball race. My husband came in first, my daughter came in second and my son came in third.

The final event of our Family Olympics was the shotput.

With an assist from my husband, my daughter came in first, my son came in second and my husband came in third.

In preparation for the medal ceremony, my son made medals for everyone.

Making these was straightforward. Children could either decorate them by peeling and sticking foam pieces or by using the enclosed glitter glue.

My son thought this activity was a lot of fun!

The medals were adorable!

During the medal ceremony, my son announced the winners of each event.

Everyone ended the day with one gold medal, one silver medal, and one bronze medal.

My son was so proud that he wanted to wear his medals to bed. We nixed that idea and hung them up in his room instead.

The final component of this box (which is really awesome) is that kids get to hand out awards to others they notice are showing examples of great character. This allows children to apply the knowledge they’ve learned and look for it in others. Plus, everyone loves receiving recognition for a job well done!

This was our first time working through a Humble Bugs box, and we loved it! A lot of thought and care went into the curation of the box which led to an engaging and fun learning experience. We can’t wait to see what they come up with in two months!

Have you tried Humble Bugs yet? Let us know what you think in the comments!
Visit Humble Bugs to subscribe or find out more! Take $10 off your first box. Use coupon code  HELLO10.